1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a packet network or a packet transport network, and more particularly, to a linear protection switching method and apparatus in a packet network or a packet transport network.
2. Description of the Related Art
To facilitate stable operation of a communication network and provide an uninterrupted service to users and maximize efficiency of the network, a management method that may respond to a fault or performance deterioration of the network is required. The management method may include, for example, restoration and protection switching. The restoration may be used to restore an interrupted service to an original state of the service using an available network path and capacity in response to an occurrence of a fault. The protection switching may be used to rapidly restore the network from a fault by pre-setting a required path and a bandwidth between nodes.
The protection switching may be performed in a packet network or a packet transport network. To perform linear protection switching in such a network, a method of managing a switching state and performing path protection switching using an automatic protection switching (APS) message, which is disclosed in Linear Protection Switching in Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)-Transport Profile (TP), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) draft draft-zulr-mpls-tp-linear-protection-switching-03.txt, and Telecommunication Standardization Sector of International Telecommunications Union (ITU-T) G.8131.1, and a method of managing a switching state and performing path protection switching using a protection state coordination (PSC) message, which is disclosed in IETF RFC6378 and ITU-T G8131.2, may be used.